Battlefield 1’s May Update, with Operation playlists and nerfed bayonets, is live (Updated)

Update: The Battlefield 1 May update is now live on all platforms. Full patch notes are available at battlefield.com.

Original story:

Battlefield 1 developer DICE has revealed Operation playlists and a bunch of tweaks that are coming in the WWI shooter’s May update. The announcements were made during a recent livestream, in which DICE went into detail on the changes (via GameSpot).

Operation playlists are exactly what they sound like: They keep you playing Operations, instead of throwing you back to the main menu at the end of a match. However, it will be quite limited at first—when the feature is introduced, the playlists will only play the same Operation over and over again, with the teams simply switching sides. DICE calls this a “first step” and plans to have players going through different Operations eventually.

While there are a number of gameplay tweaks, the big one seems to come in the form of a nerf to bayonets. Previously, players who were performing a bayonet charge would take reduced damage—15 percent less to be exact. That has now been removed, and it’s now harder to turn during a charge. DICE is exploring additional changes, including better indication of when a player is about to start a charge. As someone who would get caught by chargers around corners, I couldn’t be happier with this particular change.

Other changes include an increase to Domination’s ticket count from 100 to 200 and a decrease to the value of Conquest flag captures. All tanks’ self-repair are now the same—200 health every five seconds—and AA and field guns will now also need to be repaired after taking damage. You also won’t be able to use the AA gun for shooting targets on the ground as effectively as before, as the ground range has now been decreased—however, more distant airborne targets will now be easier to hit.

DICE has also created a new threshold that determines whether hit detection is dictated on the client or server level. Players with ping under 130 ms (or 200 ms outside of the US or Europe) will continue to have their hit detection performed on the client level, while anything higher will now be dictated by the server.

Lastly, DICE announced that it’s enabling the Premium Friends feature, which lets friends play on DLC maps provided someone owns the Premium Pass. You can take advantage of this feature from now until June 10, when EA’s E3 event EA Play kicks off.

There’s no set release date for the May update, but we’ll keep you updated as it and other information is revealed. DICE noted that it will release the full patch notes upon the update’s launch.

In other Battlfield 1 news, the shooter’s next expansion, In the Name of the Tsar, is going to introduce female soldiers.